Sunday, September 30, 2018

This is a guest post by Deborah Klens-Bigman, PhD. and Jun
Shihan in Shinto Hatakage Ryu. A martial arts practitioner and
teacher for more than thirty years, she has seen a great deal of the
budo world, and experienced its good and bad. We as budoka are not
perfect, and this seems like a good time to consider one area where
the budo world could improve. Budo has never been a male-only
practice, as can be seen most clearly in the number of women who've led, and
lead, martial ryuha in Japan. Klens-Bigman Sensei is addressing an
issue that should be of concern to everyone in budo.

First,
I would like to point out that most of my teachers in my 30-plus
years of training have been men - good, talented men. And the
vast, vast majority of my colleagues in budo are also men - honorable
people I am pleased to associate with. But sexism in budo needs to be
addressed; and I feel the need to address it very specifically, and
right now.

The
public discourse of the past two years has allowed for what pundits
refer to as "tribalism" to come out into the light. I
think it is too early to know yet whether this is a good thing (what
comes into the light can be confronted, and refuted), or a bad thing
(normalizing behavior that many of us had hoped no longer existed).
All the while there have been some voices all-too-quietly
pointing out that misogyny is ever present for all to see, regardless
of “tribe.” Perhaps it is its perpetual "there-ness"
that allows misogyny to be continuously overlooked, or disregarded.
Or, just perhaps, no one is very comfortable discussing it, so
no one does.

Since
I was a little kid sneaking out of the children's library into the
grownup sections for further adventure, I was interested in hand
weapons. Not guns, but swords, knives, glaives, spears, battle
axes, bows, maces - if you could hold it in your hand and wield it at
someone, I was ON IT - at least in the bookly sense. I lugged
home books on arms & armor that were almost as big as I was. When
I was traveling with my parents, nothing thrilled me more than
climbing around castle ruins or forts, or (the best) going to a real
medieval armory.

My
parents thought I might become a historian.

Through
all of this fascination, it never occurred to me for a single moment
that my interest was weird or should be circumscribed in any way.
That is, until I decided to actually do something about it.

I
tried fencing, which I enjoyed, but I was not happy with the
competitive aspect of it (there was no historical fencing available
like you can find now). Likewise, I was not happy with the
theatrical fencing I encountered in college; not just because it was
fake, but because there really was no opportunity to take part in
fight scenes featuring women. I decided fight choreography was
a waste of time.

When
I first encountered iaido, I was very fortunate that my teacher, an
Osaka native, had three daughters. He had no problem whatsoever
with training me. There have been few times in my life when I felt
that I really found something important. This was one of them.

Unfortunately,
my sempai did not agree. My first few months of practice, one
of them told me that it was "not proper" for women to study
Japanese swordsmanship. I decided that was silly. My Japanese
teacher was perfectly happy with me being in the dojo. However, this
sempai arranged for me to miss a demo that my teacher wanted me to
take part in. Everyone else was there. The experience was
mortifying. It was designed to make me quit. That was the first time
I realized that not everyone had the same attitude when it came to
women training in budo.

I
should point out that most of the resistance to my practicing
swordsmanship came from a number of my American sempai. During
my many training trips to Japan, I rarely encountered the feeling of
being excluded. But more about that later.

I
didn't quit. I was stubborn. I kept going to okeiko. I
volunteered to organize demos (a job no one wanted) partly so I could
not be left out again. I trained hard. I watched. I listened. I
learned. And I put up with a lot.

Budo
training for women involves more than just wanting to improve your
skills and develop your personality. It involves enduring.
Enduring sempai who, instead of being willing to help you, try
to hinder you, because something about being an onnakenshijust
doesn't feel right to them. It's walking into a seminar where
you are the only woman (hint: You have to walk in like you own the
place). If no one knows you, it's getting the puzzled look as
the guys try to figure out whose wife/girlfriend or (after awhile)
mom you are. It's also enduring looks at the inevitable banquet
when wives and girlfriends eye you with suspicion because you are
there by yourself. It's being told you are "gender
non-conforming," and that's supposed to be a compliment.

I'd
like to say the situation improves for women who teach, but it does
not. I've had men walk into my okeiko and immediately look to
one of my male students as the teacher, because it's not possible
that could be me. I've taught seminars and offered correction
to a male student who ignored me while taking the same correction
from another man. I've encountered fellow budo teachers who implied I
should be teaching women, or children, but not men.
Sadly, I gave a demo once and had a woman in the audience ask
if there are "any restrictions for women" in learning budo.
Because she assumed that there are.

And
it's rare, but it happens - someone being just a little too rough as
a training partner, landing a tsuki in jodo with the intention of
knocking you down, or knocking the wind out of you, at least. Or,
as a senior student, having a sempai publicly humiliate you in front
of the whole dojo, because you "just don't know your place"
(and having the kohai silently agree with him). The fact that I was
correct in that situation was meaningless.

One
wonders why we bother. Indeed, I have wondered, from time to
time, why Ibother.

There
are a lot of reasons for persisting. For one thing, not all
budoka behave in the ways I have mentioned (though more of them do
than I'd like). Just like the guys, there is the fun of
learning new things and gaining new skill and confidence. And I have
been to seminars in Japan where I am notthe
only woman; indeed, where several of the women have menkyo and
everyone treats me as though I have the same potential. As I
said, while I can't say that I never encountered male hostility in
Japan, I can say that, generally speaking, when it comes to okeiko,
people have treated me like any other student. And most of the
groups I have trained with are at least 1/3 female.

And
that is all women want. We want to be just like everyone else.
We want to be taught. We want to learn. We don't want to
be hit on. We aren't looking for dates. We want to be taken
seriously. And we want our expertise to be recognized.

Now
and then, a young woman comes to the dojo, with a look in her eyes
like I had so long ago. It's my job (and my pleasure) to make
her feel welcome. To help her understand that yes,
you can do this. I will help you.

And
there are good memories, like the time my teacher gave me a bear hug
after a class (in front of the sempai!) and said, "You're doing
VERY WELL."

I
do this to keep my teacher's faith in me. I do it for myself.
And yeah, I do it for women.

Wednesday, August 29, 2018

Budo
is personal. I talked about that in my last
essay. Budo practice can indeed transform who we are. If we’re
not careful though, that transformation can take on aspects and go in
directions that we shouldn’t want it to go. A lot of ink is spent
detailing the marvelous benefits of budo practice, and the benefits
are great: at the most basic, physical fitness, and moving upward to
physical skills and confidence in high stress and conflict
situations. Then there are the mental benefits; becoming calmer, more
mentally strong and able to maintain an even mental keel even when
the world is pushing you towards rash action.

These
are all great. But what happens when you take a wrong turn and start
acquiring attributes from you training that you don’t want? What
if, because of your budo training, you become an arrogant, abusive
jerk?

Judging
from the many arrogant, abusive people I’ve met in the martial
arts, the ones who don’t have any interest in the aspects of budo
that have to do with more than just hurting other people, becoming a
jerk seems to be far too common an outcome.

I’ve
met the arrogant ones who will hurt you just to prove they are better
than you, in some way only they understand. I don’t know how being
happy to hurt someone so you can say you defeated them makes you
“better”. I’ve met the abusive ones who feel entitled to harm
those around them simply because they have more powerful technique.
I’ve met the vindictive ones who will hurt partners that don’t do
exactly as they want, or take out their frustration at missing a
technique on their partner. I’ve been to seminars and met jerks who
feel entitled to only train with senior practitioners, and pout when
they have to train with anyone they feel isn’t “good enough”.
Then there are teachers who only pay attention to their favorites and
ignore everyone else. There are teachers who abuse their students
with extreme training under the guise of making them tough.

Somehow,
through all of the training meant to polish their skills and
humanity, the jerks only polished their skills, not their selves. The
lessons of budo are intensely personal. Instead of learning “mutual
benefit and welfare” or “loving protection” they learned only
to care for themselves and what they want.

The
first lesson in any dojo is etiquette, which is a formal means of
expressing respect for your teacher, for your fellow students, and
the art you are practicing. Etiquette and respect are fundamental to
all of budo. Without it, we’re only learning how to hurt each
other. Some people manage to ignore this cornerstone of budo
training and continue to think only of themselves. They can usually
be spotted because they toss off their bow to the dojo casually and
without feeling. Their bows to training partners are perfunctory at
best. They don’t realize it, but their lack of respect for the
dojo, the art and their training partners is clear to anyone who
watches.

The
most obvious lesson in budo, and the one that everyone is clear on
before they walk into the dojo for the first time, is that budo
teaches personal, physical power. The power to protect yourself and
inflict damage on others is fundamental to making a practice budo.
Less clear to people is that respect, discretion and self-control are
also fundamental to making a practice budo. I’ve met too many
people who sought to acquire the power without acquiring any
discretion and self-control, much less respect for their fellow
travelers on the path.

Acquiring
physical power like developing skill in budo, often comes along with
an elevated feeling of self-confidence. If this self-confidence isn’t
tempered with a sense of humility while the budoka is training, that
self-confidence can turn into arrogance and disdain for those less
skilled or powerful. This arrogance and disdain is a poison that
pollutes everything it comes in contact with. Arrogant, disdainful
budoka aren’t worried about the health and welfare of their
training partners or their students because they perceive that such
people aren’t powerful enough to command their respect.

Budo
training takes time, sweat and the collection of not a few bruises.
For some reason, there is a tendency among budoka to think that just
doing the physical part of budo training makes them superior
people. There is no magic in budo training that automatically
transforms anyone who does it into a spiritually perfected and
superior human being. It doesn’t just happen. You have to
work at anything you want to improve, whether it’s strike, a joint
lock, or being a better you. All of these take work. Without it, none
of these skills will improve.

It’s
easy enough to forget about working on who you are when you’re busy
acquiring powerful physical skills. The first time you realize that
you really can dominate someone physically, there is a rush of thill.
The danger lies in seeking that rush by dominating other people in
and out of the dojo. There can be a thrill when you crank an armbar a
bit more than necessary, just enough to make uke yelp a little. If
you to go after that thrill, you’ll develop yourself, but not
in a way anyone else will like. You’ll become a bit sadistic and
dangerous to be around because you want that thrill. What happens
when you meet someone you can’t dominate? Do you turn up the
strength to fill in for the technique that isn’t good enough? Can
you see how this might poison someone?

I’ve
seen teachers who brutalize their students because they can. I’ve
seen others who are worse, and damage any student who gives them the
least resistance. Often this is cloaked as “hard training that will
toughen you up”. It’s not. It’s abuse and it is strictly
to feed the diseased ego of the teacher. These teachers tend to leave
a trail of broken students who gave them a little too much
resistance, and they are surrounded by students who make excuses for
their teacher. “He’s just teaching discipline.” “It doesn’t
hurt that much, and it makes you tougher.” He’s not
teaching discipline, and that’s not how you get tougher. It’s how
you get broken.

My
teachers have done their best to make me as skillful as possible. Not
all teachers are like that. I’ve seen talented and dedicated
students driven out of the dojo when they became too skilled. These
skillful students are a threat to the teacher’s ego, because they
might equal, or worse, surpass, the teacher. Anyone who gets too good
is perceived as threat that could challenge the teacher’s spot as
the dojo alpha. These students could become more popular, or they
could start their own dojo and steal the teacher’s students away.
These teacher’s insecurities can destroy a dojo, and will certainly
mean that the dojo will never develop a healthy group of senior
students who can support the teacher and perhaps take over the dojo
someday when the teacher is ready to retire. Instead, anyone like
that is a threat and has to go. Such a student might get hurt in a
training accident with the teacher, or the teacher might start
completely ignoring them. I’ve even seen students simply driven out
of the dojo and told to never come back. These teachers have become
addicted to the adulation and honor they receive as “Sensei” and
they can’t risk having anyone around who might draw some of that
attention away.

In
budo practice, as in most things, you get out of it what you put in.
If you work hard at the techniques you can become a skilled
technician. If that’s all you practice you won’t be much of a
person though. The people who work at all aspects of budo, polish
their etiquette and their spirits, these people make themselves into
fine human beings.

Friday, July 13, 2018

Budo is personal. This seems like an obvious
thing to say, but it is a truth that often is forgotten in a world filled with
all sorts of ranks, titles, tournaments and awards. Budo isn’t about those.
Budo is about developing your skills, and if you’re lucky, finding a Way that
you can follow. Budo, in a way that can seem quite selfish, is about you. We are
not ranks, titles, tournament victories or nifty awards. Those are
things that hang on us like ornaments on a tree. Take away the ornaments, and it’s
still a tree.

I run into people who are so hyped up with worry
about their rank or passing their next test that their budo becomes a
stress-filled mess. Budo practice should lead one to be calmer and to have a
more balanced perspective. It’s easy to forget that when so much time can be
directed towards preparing for a rank test, and even more money and effort
spent getting to the test site in some far-flung city.

Much of practice can be consumed with getting
ready for tests. In the Kendo Federation, there are tests to pass every
year when starting out, so it seems like new students are always preparing for
a test. Forgetting that iai, for example, isn’t about testing and rank can get
lost in the whirl of test preparation and test taking. Rank should be a
recognition of how much you’ve learned, instead of a validation of ego. It’s
hard to make the distinction though when you’ve worked for a year or more to
prepare for a test. Pass or fail, with that much effort invested in the
process, the results of the test can overshadow the results of all the time
spent practicing and improving.

In budo, as in any do道, or way, there is no ultimate goal that
can be reached. The point is to practice each day, and each day be a little bit
better at budo and living. The process of improving doesn’t have an end point.
In a world focused on results, where we check off the accomplishment of each
item on our task list and where results are emphasized, sometimes to the point
of ignoring everything else, this sort of thinking is easily overwhelmed and
washed away.

Budo isn’t limited to a finite goal.
Implicit in the vision of practice as a way, a path, is the idea that
roads don’t really have an end. You can always continue, sometimes in the
same direction, and sometimes in a different one. The path doesn’t have an end
point. We practice. We train. We polish ourselves. As people, we’re never
finished growing and changing. One of the ideas of do is that we can
influence how we change. We’re not just stuck with the random influences that
life throws at us. We can make conscious choices about how we are going to
change and grow. Each day life changes us. Are we simple clay molded by our
experiences with no input into what we become? Budo, and all ways,
insist that we can choose how we change and influence what we become.

Enjoy the blog? Get the book!!

For each of us, the journey is personal.
Practice is personal. The lessons are personal. The changes are very personal.
Hang around a good dojo for a while and you will see new students, timid and
unsure of themselves, transform their minds and their bodies. If we let it, and
focus some effort on it, keiko, training, can profoundly change who we
are. The most common transformation is for someone meek and physically unsure
of themselves to become skilled and confident in physically dealing with other
people. That’s the obvious transformation. How else might budo training
transform us?

I find that budo can help change almost any part
of me. All I have to do is bring the part of me that I want to change into the
dojo. Just as the only way to change my skill with a sword or stick is for me
to take what I want to change with me and train with it, if I want to change
something that is not as easily seen as a sword cut or staff strike or a punch
or a throw, I have to take it into the dojo and begin working on it.

In Kodokan Judo, one of the core principles is
the idea of jita kyoei 自他共栄, often translated as “mutual benefit and welfare.” I
haven’t seen many people come into the dojo looking to change themselves to
consider how their actions can create mutual benefit for them and their
training partners, but I’ve seen many people implicitly learn this and begin
incorporating it into who they are as they spend time in the dojo. They
begin to consider how directly their
thoughtfulness or carelessness impacts the people they train with, who trust
each other to train together without harming each other. I’ve seen people who were strong, powerful and disdainful of
others train themselves to strong, powerful, gentle and considerate of others.

The story of a weak, timid person coming into
the dojo and learning to be a powerful, confident fighter is common (and
true!), but what other ways can we change ourselves through training? The
wonderful thing about budo keiko is that it is a time set aside for changing
aspects of ourselves that we want to change. That’s what makes training so
personal. We are taking time and effort and directing it towards changing
ourselves in some way. The potential for personal development and
transformation is tremendous.

We’re not simple clay molded by what happens to
us. We have choices to make about what we become and how we change. Those who
work at developing their entire self, who work on humility, graciousness,
kindness and compassion usually succeed in becoming more humble, gracious, kind
and compassionate. Budo is a way of interacting with the world. It’s
about how we deal with the world around us. It’s about how handle the stress
and mess of life. Practicing budo impacts how we relate with all the people
around us.

Budo is personal. It’s about developing and
refining who we are. It’s not about the flashy stuff on the outside. It’s not
about the ranks and belts and trophies and the awards. It’s about who we are
and how we deal with the world and the people around us. Ultimately, that
creates a lot more satisfaction than any rank or case of trophies.